SquareEnix continues to make an Ass out of itself.

[ookaze]

Fortunately I distanced myself from the FF series. I'm not waiting them eagerly anymore since IX.
That's why I could wait years before playing X and XII.
Square Enix has started destroying its brand, and are on the process of destroying their customer base.
It looks pretty obvious to me that their fanbase is shrinking fast, and it's accelerated by westernizing their games and putting them on XB360, thus destroying their fanbase in Japan, which is their biggest market.
When they finally realized their main market was shrinking, instead of helping it like Nintendo did, they left their fanbase in the dust and fled to try to cater exclusively to western audience.

Fortunately Yuji Horii still has a hand on Dragon Quest, which is the sole JRPG from SE that has a chance of surviving this disaster of SE on this generation of home consoles.
If it wasn't for the DS, JRPG fans could start to weep.

What's alarming, is that the situation is proof that the main advantage of the HD consoles, which is HD, is actually no advantage at all, as it doesn't help sell more games. Stupid decisions after stupid decisions means their series are quickly declining. The rate is just alarming. Star Ocean should not have dropped like a rock like that.
Well, I'm amused at the reversal though. I remember people touting SO as a huge series in Japan, citing the last one, and the one before.
Unless the fanbase doubled in the USA, the series is just crashing hard. And I doubt the fanbase doubled in the USA, especially in the USA where the audience of XB360 is full of people ready to call gay anything that has a bit of vibrant colors, and are then unable to even touch the box, being so insecure as they are.

This is the kind of crashing and burning that I always feared for FFXIII (even if it will still sell millions).

The effect of all that will be far worse long term though. Basically, SE is now very unreliable.
I think their brand is in the toilet. They even put their unreliability on Dragon Quest. I guess as soon as they realised Dragon Quest would steal the thunder of the flagship FF series, they started destroying it so that FF stays above.
I bet that won't be enough.